One O'Clock Jump

by Lise McClendon

  She walked toward him. He turned, his face set in malice.

  “Nice day for a drive in the country.”

  Reggie Vanvleet’s face reddened as his jaw worked furiously. His hands flexed and opened. He wore a purple shirt, its neck open, a satiny black jacket, gray trousers.

  “What are you doing here?” he said, almost growling.

  “Visiting a friend. You?”

  She stopped five feet from him. His eyes looked wild, darting, searching. Dust streaked his jacket. For a moment, he might have been acting, but he wasn’t; this was too real. He turned toward his car.

  “Looking for someone?”

  He mumbled something over his shoulder. She skipped to catch up. “What?”

  “I said, you know right well enough who I’m looking for.” He stopped, turned, beet red now. “Iris Jackson, or whatever her name is. You led me here, but it seems I’m a little too late.” He looked away down the road, his noble profile draining of color, hair flipping in the wind. Thunder rumbled from the clouds building to the west.

  Reggie turned and stepped close to Lennox. “Tell me where she is. Where the money is. I’ll give you a cut of it. That’s what you want, isn’t it? More than Georgie would have given you.”

  “I don’t want a cut of it. It’s not mine.”

  He tried to laugh. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law. That’s what the old man says.”

  “Well, I don’t have it. So it’s not mine.”

  “Who does?” He took her shoulders and shook her. “Where is it, blast it? Why is everyone so goddamn closed-mouthed about it?”

  “Could it be they don’t want you to get your mitts on the money?”

  He let his hands drop. “Who lives here?”

  “A fellow named Jimmie Nagel. Railroad man.”

  Disappointment creased his face. He rubbed his forehead. “Goddamn it!”

  “Just go home, Reg. Talk to your old man about it.”

  “Too late for that. I got debts, see? They’re leaning on me. If I don’t get it…I told the old man, and you know what he said? Give a man enough rope, he’ll hang himself.” He looked at her desperately. “My own father.”

  “He won’t abandon you. Ask him again.”

  Chickens pecked at the tassels on his loafers, beating their russet wings against his trousers. He stared at the clouds, enjoying his pitiful despair, blaming his problems on his father’s heartlessness. Ever the actor, his expression calculated to rouse sympathy. Lennox felt the bile rise in her throat.

  But she looked at his pockets for heavy instruments just the same. Was Reggie man enough to use a gun? Hell, I’ve known midgets with more guts, she thought. But what kind of a man did it take? Only one who didn’t consider the consequences. That breed wasn’t rare.

  “It’s too late now. Too late for anything.” Then he suddenly grabbed her again. “Where is it? I need that money. Can’t you see? I’m the one, I’m the one who needs it. My father won’t give me anything. He blames me for not being Dick, for not being the lawyer—”

  A voice caught on the wind, a lost word. Then the sound of the car, tat-a-tat against the gravel, a throaty roar. Their heads turned together at the sound and they saw the blue car coming toward the farmhouse, and the woman running after it.

  “Gladys Rose! Stop, baby, stop!”

  Reggie spun and ran for the road. Lennox was right behind him. The man tried to hurdle the low picket fence, caught his trouser cuff, and fell over into the ditch in a heap, losing a loafer. The blue Nash kept moving, passing the Packard, then the yellow coupe, the black-haired woman looking at them, at the rearview mirror, then she hit the gas.

  Lennox was through the gate and running for the Packard. Gladys ran up the road, waving her arms. As Lennox turned the key, the woman jumped into the car. Down at the crossroads, a yellow school bus let out a plump girl in saddle shoes. The Packard backed, swerved, and tore against the dirt ruts as Reggie threw himself into his coupe.

  The Nash put up a cloud of dust. It was easy enough to follow, but not to catch, even with the Packard’s getaway guts. They bounced on the deep, hard ruts, Gladys grabbing the dash. Behind them, the yellow coupe roared up close. They were in the center of the farm road, where the ruts weren’t as bad, but Reggie was going to pass. Lennox rolled down her window.

  The shot rang out. Gladys squealed and ducked. Lennox looked in her mirror and saw Vanvleet’s arm out the window, the pistol in his hand. Left-handed, on a dirt road, from a moving vehicle. He’d be lucky to hit a barn on purpose. But she eased the Packard right, into a new set of ruts.

  The engine of the coupe purred as he passed them, his head out the window, pistol outstretched, hair flying. His perfect white teeth were going to catch bugs. Holy Mary, he was enjoying himself.

  With the cloud of dirt behind the coupe, she had no choice but to slow and let him get a lead. Gladys began coughing and rolled up her window. The air inside the car was stuffy and full of dirt. Lennox wiped her eyes and kept driving.

  “Who is that man? Is he going to kill Gladys Rose? Is that the boyfriend she ran away from? Oh, Lordy, he’s going to shoot her.”

  The coupe and Nash had turned left at an open crossroads and they watched as Reggie blasted with the gun again. A ewe in the pasture dropped to her knees. They screamed past a farmyard, rusty Model T’s and ancient tractors in the tall dry grass, then another where a woman was hanging laundry on a line.

  “He’s seen Gangbusters one time too many,” Lennox said.

  “Who is he?”

  “His name’s Vanvleet. Seems he was on the scent of that money, too.”

  “You knew about that money? I thought you came looking for Gladys Rose.”

  “She’s been looking for it, too. So if I found her—”

  “But she ain’t been to the farm. Not in years.”

  “She didn’t know it was there. She was looking for Edna Klundt.”

  The woman held on to the door handle as they made the corner. “That Edna Klundt hadn’t three ounces of brains. And I’m not saying that ‘cause of Louise. That girl was stone-dumb. She told me when she came out that she was a hatcheck girl. I didn’t believe her, but she was dressed nice. I knew, though. She was a lady of the evening.”

  “People change, Mrs. Nagel.” The Packard and its bald tires wouldn’t go more than thirty-five on these ruts, and she was losing them.

  “My Gladys Rose never did nothing that low. I brought her up right. She might have been starving and broke, but she never laid with no men for money. Not my girl.”

  What about John Lazia? Her daughter might not have laid with men for money exactly, but there was worse, like heaving a poor innocent girl off a bridge in the middle of the night.

  The yellow coupe was closing on Iris. They turned right, out of sight behind a line of poplars. A blast was followed by a pop.

  When they turned the corner, the blue Nash sat listing in the ditch, its left rear tire blown. The string-bean poplars had stopped the car. The yellow coupe sat half off the road, door wide, as Reggie ran, pistol in hand, toward the Nash. “Oh, Lordy,” whispered Gladys Nagel.

  Lennox pulled in behind the coupe and shut off the engine. She jumped out and let the door fly, then stopped. Reggie had Iris by the collar, dragging her from the car.

  “Let her go, Reggie,” Lennox said. He stared at her for an instant, then went back to venting his anger on Iris. “Reggie!”

  He finally stopped shaking the woman. Lennox stared at her black hair. It was her—Iris: the creamy skin, the crimson nails, right down to the red dress and the platform shoes she should have been wearing when she went off the bridge. “She doesn’t know where the money is. She would have taken it and run if she did.”

  Iris seemed to wake up, getting her feet under her and twisting out of Reggie’s grasp. Her red dress was torn. One eyebrow was split and bleeding. She turned to run, got five steps, and stopped.

  Gladys Nagel stood next to the Nash. Her daughter froze as if caugh
t in the headlights.

  “Gladys Rose?” the mother said. She stepped closer, her voice wavering. “It’s been so long, child. Let me look at you.”

  “Don’t call me that.” Iris’s throaty voice clinched it for Lennox. Disgust and despair mingled on her face. Then she turned away. Could this frigid article be crying? This would have been Reggie Vanvleet’s cue to grab the girl, but he was transfixed by the drama, moving his gun from one to the other.

  Tears streamed down Mrs. Nagel’s face. “Come here, child. To your mama.”

  “I don’t have a mama.” Iris turned back, tears on her cheeks, but her face twisted in a vicious sneer. “My mama gave me up when she took up with Jimmie Nagel.”

  “Don’t say that, child. I did what I had to. I never gave you up.”

  “Oh, yes, you did. Every single night.”

  Confusion wracked her body. “How can you say that?”

  “The truth is easy enough even if you’re full up to here—” Iris put her hand across her bloody eyebrow—“with lies and liars.”

  Gladys stepped closer to her daughter, reaching out a hand. “What truth, darlin’? I’m listening now.”

  “Now? Ten loused-up years later?” Iris looked wild. “Why do you think I never came back? Why do you think I had to get away? To get away from Jimmie Nagel.”

  Gladys swallowed hard but kept her eyes on her daughter’s face. “What?”

  “Oh yes. Good ol’ Jimmie. Midnight was his favorite time, but he wasn’t particular.”

  “Baby—” Gladys held her ribs as tears streaked down her face.

  “And now all I want is to get away from all of this, from you, all of you. If you’ll just give me the money.”

  Reggie stepped beside her and grabbed her arm. “We can split it, huh, sister? How much is it exactly? Half a million? Fifty-fifty will leave us each plenty, huh?”

  “Put the gun down, Reggie,” Lennox said. Her voice sounded strange to her, twisted on the wind. She thought about the switchblade in her pocket, but with her bad fingers and his gun, it was a ridiculous notion, a provocation. She felt calm and knew she shouldn’t. But she’d found Iris, and the money. Iris would talk. Amos would be cleared. He would recover. Everything would be all right.

  “This is over now,” she said, hoping she was right.

  Iris looked at Reg hovering next to her like a bloodsucker, then gave him a sharp jab of the elbow to the solar plexus. He doubled over with an oof as Iris bolted for the road, running hard. The sirens started then, as if switched on by the woman’s desperation.

  Lennox dove for Reggie’s hand with the gun, but he saw her and stepped back as he came up, still gasping for air. He wheeled around toward the running figure. Lennox tried again, succeeding in pulling down his outstretched arm, until he gave her a swift kick behind the knees and she lost her footing. Above the dry grass, he squinted against the purple clouds, aiming at the fleeing streak of red.

  He squeezed the trigger. A shot roared over the ditch and made a dull sound in the dirt. Lennox struggled to her feet. He aimed again. A hand from behind pushed her aside. Gladys Nagel leapt at Reggie, screaming, “No!” covering his arm with her body as the gun discharged.

  The sirens were close now, wailing in the stillness. Lightning flickered as Lennox knelt over Gladys Nagel. A ragged red hole in her chest gushed blood. Thunder rumbled. Lennox pressed the heel of her hand against the wound. The pulse grew fainter. She pushed back the woman’s hair, which had been loosened by the wind, dusted with road dirt. Her eyes were open, glassy.

  “Easy now,” Lennox whispered. “Easy.”

  Above them, Reggie Vanvleet was taking another shot and cursing. Lennox looked up, felt a careless despair. They were all fools, fools for money. Sirens filled the air. Sheriff’s deputies and Highway Patrolmen on motorcycles screeched against the gravel, produced dozens of firearms, and shouted down Reggie.

  Lennox stood up in front of him, took out her switchblade. Shouts came from behind her to get down, get out of the way.

  “Put the gun down, Reggie. It’s over. They’d just as soon clean your clock with lead as spit on you.”

  Vanvleet’s chest heaved. His nostrils flared, eyes darting at the fleeing girl, the cops, the wounded mother. Lennox saw the violet sky in his eyes as he pointed the gun at her chest and pulled the trigger.

  The click rocked her. He stared dumbstruck at the silent gun. In that clear second, the birds fell silent in the poplars. Lennox put her hand to her stomach, but it was already covered with Gladys’s blood. She thought of Tillie, in the ground. She gasped for air, felt it fill her lungs, heard a high-pitched wail from somewhere.

  Lennox grabbed the barrel of the gun, pushed down his arm. She jumped close to him, put her blade tip to the collar of his silk shirt. The point stuck his thin skin. A dot of blood grew. It was red, alive, and she surprised herself by loving it this time. Your blood, Reggie. With your blood, you pay.

  His taut figure went limp as the cops ran forward, pulling off Lennox’s arm, slapping down the pistol, spinning him around, snapping on handcuffs. A deputy in motorcycle dress glared at Lennox until she closed the switchblade, put in her pocket.

  It began to rain, fat, angry drops. Lennox crouched beside the dying woman. She leaned close, sheltering her from the storm.

  On the wind, one of Tillie’s songs: Go in and out the window, go in and out the window, as we have done before.

  “It’s all done now,” Dorie whispered. Her face was wet with rain and tears. “She’s safe.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Lennox walked out of the Methodist Church in Raytown, glad to see the afternoon sun. The service for Gladys Nagel had not been well attended, although cousin-in-law Louise did make an appearance. Young Phyllis sat with a very old lady in the front row. The hymns were dirges, lying in the stomach like an overcooked meal.

  People clustered on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps. They stared at her, a stranger, alone. They whispered behind their hands. They had read the paper; maybe they blamed her for bringing Mrs. Nagel to the scene of her violent, senseless death. Maybe they blamed her for mucking with their dull lives. Maybe she didn’t care.

  Maybe she did. Lennox felt bent and old as she trudged down the sidewalk toward the Packard. In a yard next to the church, a small dog came yapping up to the fence, beating down the cosmos and the last of summer’s daisies. She paused to admire his energy, his flying fur and squeaky voice, leaned down to pick a daisy that poked through the pickets as the black sedan slowed next to her at the curb.

  Later, she wasn’t sure if the woman had even seen her, if the slowing was intentional. Then she was sure it was, sure the woman had wanted her to turn, to notice the light blue gloves she held tensely on the steering wheel, the hat with the veil pulled low over her brow. Marilyn Terraciano never looked Lennox’s way. Sunglasses, hat, and veil shielded her face. She tapped one gloved finger as if impatient, then sped away, through the parked cars and mourners, out of Raytown for good.

  Lennox hadn’t mentioned Marilyn Terraciano to the cops, hadn’t told anyone who she really was. She’d chosen her life, molded it from scraps of nothing into something better—if not respectable, then at least something worth saving. Lennox admired her for that; it was no mean feat. What could the cops pin on Marilyn but a ruined life? Georgie was probably going up the river soon, and being married to Georgie was punishment enough.

  Back in Kansas City, Lennox decided to skip Sylvia Anken’s memorial service. She could still see her silver hair flying as she fell through the night air, still remember the pale, ghostly figure floating facedown in the Missouri. That would be memorial enough, and someday it might block the memories of her in the morgue drawer.

  Lennox drove to the office and straightened her desk until there was really no more straightening to do, no more reports to write, no phone calls to answer, and it was time to go home.

  The sun was going down over the Boston Building as Dorie Lennox climbed down the narrow, w
orn stairs and felt the heat rising from the pavement on Wyandotte. The streetcar was pulling away. Amos Haddam looked up and smiled.

  “Got ‘em back. They were in the girl’s car.” He waved two small booklets with leather covers. He opened the black one and sighed. “Can’t believe I got her back.”

  Lennox fingered her new splint. It was awkward and heavy. The sky was clear again, no more thunderstorms. The air smelled sweet with alfalfa and clover. Amos gave her a long look, and she had a feeling he wasn’t looking at her.

  She shuffled on the sidewalk, swinging her keys. “The past doesn’t come back, Amos. You don’t get another chance.”

  He squinted at her. “But it’s a part of you. Like it or not, it stays alive inside you. You can’t change that. You can regret it, you can wish it’d been different, you can even try to forget, but you can’t change the way it’s changed you. All we are, lass, is a ratty little bundle of our past.”

  Not that she wanted to be reminded. “That’s comforting, Dr. Freud.”

  He smiled. “You’ll be in tomorrow, then? We’ll catch up on the paperwork.”

  “I think I’ll take the day off.” He squinted at her. “They find the girl yet?” The dragnet had come up empty. Iris could be anywhere by now. Lennox wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Iris should be caught, punished for what she did to Sylvia Anken and to Davy Esterly. But it’d been a hard life, and freedom was just about the only thing Iris Jackson had going for her. Maybe she deserved just one break. She would never get her hands on Lazia’s money. It had taken the feds a matter of minutes to determine it was phony, to link it to a counterfeit scheme from five years back, when Lazia had used it for gambling payouts. Harry Truman wouldn’t have been amused. The younger daughter, Phyllis, she could have used that dough; it might have made a difference. But Phylly wouldn’t get it.

  The person Iris Jackson owed her life to would never get it, either. For Gladys Nagel, there would never be an even break.

  Driving home, Lennox suddenly wanted to be alone, to lie in her room at the top of the boardinghouse, not talk to a soul. Drink a little gin, play a little music, and forget.